.
He didn't mean to... to do whatever it was he was doing to them, to his people (his people) but he didn't know how to stop it, either. He hadn't even started to notice he was doing it until one of Sam's out of town cousins visited for the day and just... didn't see him. Had walked through him like he wasn't even there.
And part of him knew this made sense. Part of him, part of him... He brushed his knuckles lightly over his breastbone, remembering what did and what did not lay beneath.
He didn't start to understand what he was doing until a new student transferred to the school and slowly, but surely, changed.
The first few days he had stared with uncertainty at Danny's seat. He had asked Dash, in the locker room, about him and his lengthy absence. He had frowned when the teacher called on a student that he couldn't see.
But now... Now he could see Danny.
Danny could tell that he scared him. He had overheard him talking about wanting to move away. He could also tell that the fear wouldn't last much longer.
From the shallows of the Dream, his vision obscured by Dream reeds and rushes, Danny watched Amity Park move above him, full of tiny lovely lights of life, all connected by silken cords. All connected to one another.
All connected to Danny.
Here, in the Dream, Danny could feel himself like a great, bloated spider, cross-legged in the center of a web. Six hands, two feet, eyes that saw too much and too little, fangs that dripped with imaginary venom. He could feel himself, frail and tired and trying so, so hard to hold on to the dregs of his humanity and failing. A monster and a teenager. An infant in the eyes of the other monsters.
He blinked, slow as a glacier and as quick as the Dream would let him. The web and the fangs remained.
Did he Love them, those tiny lights, the ones they belonged to? Not in the same way he Loved Clockwork. Not in the same way he Loved his parents, or his sister, or Sam and Tucker, or his teacher.
He looked to the threads that connected them. They were different, Danny could tell, even beyond how the lights of their lives were firmly locked away in Danny's chest. Thicker, though not as thick as the chain that connected Danny to Clockwork. Even so, Danny could be moved by them. He knew this. Had felt this.
One of them could pull, and he would follow.
He raised his hand to whisper a finger along a thread, feeling its smooth fibers catch along the rough patches of his fingertip. He could feel the person this belonged to. He knew them. Principal Ishiyama.
Did he Love her?
What was this string? What tied them together?
He pushed down on the thread and watched as the little light, as Principal Ishiyama, jittered closer to him.
With a shudder, he released it.
He could feel them, the end of each string both extruded from the surface of his skin and at the same time all knotted together in a hollow space inside Danny, lower than his heart, and-
Oh.
His lips and chin were slick with venom and saliva. The purpose of a spider web was to trap, was to feed.
Young creatures were always hungry.
Except, except, except, that wasn't all there was to it, was there? When he fought the others, he wasn't just some, some supernatural animal defending its prey from rivals, was he?
With a shaking hand, he pushed his fangs back into his mouth until his gums ached and his dentition once again felt normal to his questing fingers.
He wasn't eating them, his people (his people). Maybe, maybe he was feeding on them, but that didn't hurt them, did it? He'd know if they were hurt. This wasn't parasitism. It wasn't predation. It was... It was a mutualistic relationship. He kept them safe, his people (his people), and they gave him...
Something.
He didn't know what.
He stood, wet and dripping and heaved himself out of the shallows of the Dream and into the waking world. As he did so, he felt a tiny, Loving tug on the always-not-quite-there collar around his neck. Clockwork's way of letting Danny know he was there.
Danny let out an involuntary croon, part of him wanting nothing more than to dive back into the Dream and find his way to Clockwork. The rest of him was scared.
He padded over to where he'd left Sam and Tucker, sleeping on the floor, and nuzzled his way in between them, determined to enjoy the rest of the sleepover.
.
"Do you ever," said Danny, watching Principal Ishiyama closely, "feel trapped?"
"No?" said Sam.
"Why?" asked Tucker.
"I think," said Danny, carefully, "that Amity Park is a trap."
"How so?" asked Tucker, gesturing with his juice box.
"People don't leave," said Danny. "Reasonably, they should."
"People are weird like that," said Sam. "Some people will stay in their houses even when a tsunami is coming."
"Yes," said Danny, "but I think I might have... bound people here. Somehow. Tied them to... things."
"What kind of things?" asked Tucker.
"The city. The land. Each other. Me."
"People could stand to be more tied to the land," Sam said, flicking at one of Tucker's fries with a long, black-painted fingernail. A tension began to build at the edge of Danny's awareness.
"Is this like that thing where you said the clock guy gave you our lives so you could make us immortal?" asked Tucker. Tucker didn't entirely believe Danny about what had happened in the Dream.
Danny bit his lower lip. "It's... similar?"
"Well, I mean, it doesn't sound like a bad thing. As long as you aren't eating people or driving them into insanity, it's probably fine," said Tucker, rescuing his fries from Sam.
"Free will?" suggested Danny, weakly. (Weakly, because as good as it was to make your own choices, didn't a completely free will mean that you were unLoved?)
"Are you doing it on purpose?" asked Sam. "Trapping people here, I mean."
"No," said Danny.
Sam shrugged. "There you go. It's something unavoidable for you, too, so don't worry about it, and if there's something good you can do with it, take advantage of it. Like I said, people could stand to be more connected to the land." Again, something felt significant about that to Danny, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
Danny refocused his attention on Principal Ishiyama. "Have you noticed anything different about Principal Ishiyama lately?"
"She's more involved this week, I guess," said Sam. "Talking to more students. Usually, she doesn't leave her office. Is this connected?"
"Everything's connected," said Danny, absently worrying at a cuticle. "I think I pulled on one of the strings connecting her. She moved."
"Weird," said Sam.
.
When he slept, rare as that was, nowadays, Danny found himself in the Dream.
The web had changed. There were more strands leading from the humans to the land, to what nature there was in Amity Park.
Danny ran his fingers along the suddenly-tense line between himself and Sam. This was far less one-way than it seemed. If he focused inward, if he let his eyes drift shut, and Dreamed within the Dream, he could feel the tiny jerks and tugs of the web acting on him, and...
He brought his hands up to the collar. Clockwork's directions, too. He could feel them, in the mechanical vibration transmitted up the chain, too regular to be noticed unless one looked for it, lost to sensory fatigue.
Healthy children had healthy diets, it seemed to say, even if the word wasn't quite diet. Or cult, either, for that matter. Or kingdom. Responsibility? No, that wasn't it. Vassals? Thralls?
Danny hated it when the simplest of words eluded him.
He sighed and let himself drift over the surface of the Dream. The web, obviously, had been doing fine without his conscious input, and he was doing what his Loved ones wanted.
Amity Park might be a trap, yes, but only because Danny cared.
